How to Configure Synthetic Backups to Cloud with Full and Incremental Backup to Disk?

I am currently doing Full backups to disk at the end of the work week with incremental backups to disk at the end of each work day. The Full backups are retained on disk for a month. The Incremental backups are retained for a week.

What I am hoping to do is also duplicate these backups to the cloud. However a regular duplicate of the Full to the cloud would be both time and cost prohibitive. To minimize the amount of data to be transferred, it looks like synthetic backups are the way to go for cloud backup.

So what I am hoping to do is:

Full weekly backups to disk to be retained for one month on disk.

Incremental daily backups to disk to be retained for one week on disk.

Synthetic full backup to cloud to be retained perpetually.

Duplicate the incremental daily backups to the cloud to be retained for one week.

How would I configure this in Backup Exec? A Synthetic Backup is defined in Backup Exec as a baseline Full, Incrementals, and a Synthetic Full Backup.

So when defining the backup job:

Do I configure the Full and Incrementals to go to Disk and then configure the Synthetic Full Backup to go directly to the cloud?

Or do I have to configure the Full, Incrementals, and Synthetic Full to go to Disk and then add a separate duplicate task for the Synthetic Full Backup to go to the Cloud?

Re: How to Configure Synthetic Backups to Cloud with Full and Incremental Backup to Disk?

1. You will need to install the "Advanced Disk Based Backup feature" Backup Exec Console -> Installation and Licensing -> Install Features and Licenses on this Backup Exec server

2. The synthetic backup will be applicable only for file system data

3. You can do a Full backup to Disk (weekend), Incremental Backup to Disk (weekdays) and synthetic to cloud storage will just combine Full and Incrementals and create a new synthetic Full on the Cloud. In short, it is like a full Backup to Cloud, so cost wise I am not sure how much it will lower the cost. (as a side note, if backing up or duplicating to cloud just ensure verify is disabled in the Job)

If you want, you can do the Full and Incremental to local Disk and then Duplicate the Full Backup to Cloud storage.

Re: How to Configure Synthetic Backups to Cloud with Full and Incremental Backup to Disk?

I dont think you can write your synthetic backup to cloud without incurring extra costs as once you have the first synthetic(full) in the cloud the next set of incrementals will depend on that sythetic and then to assemble the next synthetic it will read from the cloud (which for most cloud providers has a cost attached.)

You can probably duplicate your synthetic to the cloud so that the latest synthetic full always resides in on-site storage. Basically a synthetic operation kind of works like this (assuming trying to emulate weekly fulls with daily incremnetals and not implementing a daily full scenario)

Initial Full backup

Incrementals 1 through 5

Weekly Synthetic (full) 1 - combines Initial Full with Incrementals 1 through 5 to make a synthetic full

Re: How to Configure Synthetic Backups to Cloud with Full and Incremental Backup to Disk?

Thanks for the insight and clarification. I know we can't avoid read costs to the cloud but can we minimize transfer costs?

For instance:

When Backup Exec creates the weekly synthetic by combining the previous weekly synthetic plus any incrementals that occurred since -- is this performed on the Backup Server before being sent to the storage? Or is the reconstitution done in the storage device?

For instance, suppose the synthetic backup process occurs entirely in the cloud. Meaning the initial full backup baseline is in the cloud, the incrementals are in the cloud, and the synthetic fulls are in the cloud. When it is time to perform a synthetic full, does Backup Exec just sends read/write commands to the cloud? Or does it actually create the synthetic backup on the server and then sends the backup set over to the cloud bit-by-bit?